


A blissful lack of memory

by AetosForeas



Series: She who cannot be escaped [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-11 04:19:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20147518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AetosForeas/pseuds/AetosForeas
Summary: Brasidas and Kassandra, from their first time together to their relationship maturing, past Pylos and finally leading to Amphipolis.





	1. Echoing voices

She remembered.

Sometimes Kassandra thought that was her best trait, and sometimes she thought it was her worst, but either way it was something so much a part of her she couldn’t imagine not having it, that ability to remember the past like it had just happened. She remembered training with Nikolaos and she remembered his hand clapsing on her wrist. She remembered Alexios as a baby in her arms and she remembered him slapping her in the face on Andros and she remembered seeing him cut Pericles’ throat in Athens.

The way it had felt to go hungry for days on Kephallonia as a child, the way Anais smelled their first night together, the way the boat looked when she’d left.

Remembering things others seemed able to forget, somehow.

Now she was remembering being a small child in the yard outside, even as she stood in that yard, listening to insects humming in the warmth of a summer night. In the distance a wolf would howl, or voices would speak just out of the range of her hearing. Life, doing what it did, and it felt so strange to be there.

Men and women walked by and she felt their eyes on her, curious. Tales were already spreading of the misthios who brought down a king, who survived being thrown off of Taygetos. Some spoke of Leonidas, but others talked about Athena, or Ares – a few of the older women had already concocted a story of Ares coming to Myrrine’s bed in Nikolaos’ guise on the night she was conceived. That one made her laugh.

_You’re right that Nikolaos was not my father, but oh, how you’ve guessed wrong about who was._

Perhaps it wasn’t fair to discard Nikolaos. She knew it took more than providing seed to be a parent. But every time she tried to soften towards him, she remembered his fingers on her wrist, lifting her off her feet, his eyes staring into hers.

The sound of a man, striding with purpose and not trying to conceal his approach, caught her attention. She turned her head and saw him come around the corner up the hill from the Agora, a fired clay amphora with snakes and vines painted along its surface in his large, well-formed hand.

“Brasidas. What brings you here?”

“I saw this in the market and thought of you.” He held up the amphora. “It’s fairly strong, and it lacks that cloying sweetness that they so favor in Athens.”

“And you know what wine they drink in Athens? Been there often?” She smiled despite wanting not to, especially at the look on his face. It could only be called mischief, a great sense of amusement at himself.

“More times than they’d like. Dress a little differently and most Athenians wouldn’t know a Messenian fish peddler from a _Spartiate_.”

“Most _Spartiates_ would never pretend to be a Messenian fish peddler.”

“There is that.” He came closer and she pretended to idly regard him. His shoulders were broad, his arms well-formed. His beard put her off, slightly – it reminded her too much of Nikolaos – but the warm, friendly cast to his face when he smiled set him apart. “Where is Myrrine?”

“Visiting with old friends in Gytheion. _Mater_ has friends everywhere, it sometimes seems.” Kassandra gestured to the door of the house. “I think we have a kylix or two left, if you want to come in.”

“Lead the way.” She was dressed only in a chiton, and it wasn’t until they were both seated around the table and he’d poured wine into the kylix for her that she realized it, but he was looking. Many men had looked at her, of course, but usually it was over a shield rim or from behind a blade. His frank gaze made her feel a little confused.

“So. Home at last.” He raised his cup and she did likewise, drinking down half the cup in one motion. He was right – it was strong, and so dry it could pass for a laconism. “How does it feel?”

“Strange.”

“Good strange?”

“I’ve gone so long without hearing the way… nobody on Kephallonia said _xiphos_ right. You know? They sang it, up/down. Here… the way it feels like a thrust.” She drank more, thinking. “And there’s a particular smell, the way bread here smells, I hadn’t even realized I missed it.”

“When I was in Amphipolis, I tried the bread. Too soft, I think they mix barley in. I didn’t like it.” His eyes were huge and dark and he didn’t avert them when she looked at him, meeting hers openly. That wide, broad hand around the bottom of the cup, she found herself looking at the fingers. They looked strong, she could see where the skin was hardened by years of spear work, but there was a grace to the arch of the thumb. “Are you settling in?”

“Trying to. Some things are welcome. Others…” She twisted her neck, feeling bashful in a way she had not in a while. “_Mater_ seems to have settled in more easily.”

“She grew up here.” His eyes got a faraway look. “For those of us born to it, realizing all of _Hellas_ is a different place can be difficult. Still, I’m glad you reclaimed your home, even if… well. Pausanias.”

“Yes.” She couldn’t keep the grin hidden and didn’t much feel like trying. “Dear cousin Pausanias.”

“He’s gone missing.”

“Indeed he has.”

“Should I ask?”

“Do you really want to know?” She arched an eyebrow. Brasidas was a General, a soldier from childhood, born and bred to be loyal to the Kings. Kassandra had grown up a cast off on an island to the north, lived in a hovel, killed and stole to survive. Yet, hers was the blood of Leonidas, royal blood, she could trace her lineage back to Agis, and through him to Eurysthenes the Heraclid – she was every bit the descendent of Heracles and Perseus as Pausanias or even Archidamos, every bit as royal.

“He betrayed Sparta. His death, if it came, would not upset me overmuch.” He laughed. “They’re talking about recalling his father from exile, they’re so afraid of you.”

“Of me? Why?”

“Because the longer the Agiad set is unfilled, the more worried they get that you’ll decide to seat yourself on it, and woman or not none of them think that anyone could stop you.” He laughed again, drank more of the wine and regarded her. “Nor do I, really. But I know better. If you wanted it, you’d have already found a way to get it. You claimed Boeotia when an entire army couldn’t, won the Olympics _and_ resolved the situation in Arkadia without undue bloodshed and got Lagos and his family safely away. No, you have other priorities.”

“That I do.” She held out her cup and he refilled it. “I’ve thought about it. Gorgo did it. Why not me? But no.” They stopped talking for a little while, eyes meeting over the rims of the kylix. “I’m too used to going where I want, doing what I please. A throne would just be another kind of cage.”

He just smiled at that, and she was again struck by how _young_ he looked when he smiled, how unlike a Spartan. Jovial, and quick witted, talking with him was like sparring, but never hostile. No, it definitely wasn’t hostility she felt there, sitting across from him. Without his armor, she could see the lines of his torso underneath his exomis, the breadth of the muscles. She looked at him openly, not bothering to conceal it.

“_Mater_ won’t be back tonight.”

“I’m sorry I missed a chance to say hello, but…” He sat forward. “I’m glad to get to speak to you without someone trying to kill us.”

“Is that all you want to do? Speak?” She straightened up, feeling a flush on the skin of her face and neck. “Because I can think of other things we could do.”

*

There was only moonlight in the room upstairs she’d slept in as a child, but it was enough to see by, once her eyes adjusted. She’d always been keen eyed, a good shot with a bow, able to see while gliding through the leaves and brush. So she saw him as he shed his clothing, saw all of him.

He wasn’t her first – that was Anais, of course, and after her there had been others. He wasn’t even her first man, that had been a shepherd named Aison who’d been a few years her senior, who’d gone off with the Athenians and never returned. She’d liked him well enough, but he was hardly a great love. Still, he was a point of comparison, if nothing else.

Brasidas naked reminded her of art. She’d seen carvings in Phidias’ workshop that approached the way his hips flared, the muscles of his torso, but they lacked the scars that puckered around his ribs and across his flanks. It was also a surprise to her to see the hair on his chest – you didn’t see that on most statues and Aison had been almost girlish by comparison.

She liked the way his nares opened as she disrobed in the dark, the open admiration of his gaze as it swept across her skin. Kassandra was far from ashamed of herself, but it was still nice to feel that stirring when you knew that you affected another. She walked towards him, put out a hand and touched his side near his hip. Explored the scar that ran up to his ribs.

“How?”

“Fighting on the beach near Phokis. I was green back in those days.” He stepped in closer, ran his hand down her cheek, cupped her chin and came in close. She opened her mouth, thought about speaking again, and then decided that words weren’t what she wanted.

His kiss was much softer than she expected, gentle and teasing.

She heard a noise and only knew it was her when she felt it in her chest, as she pushed him backward onto the bed. He looked up at her with his eyes wide and a open mouthed smile before his hands came up and clasped at the small of her back, running up and down her skin, and she crushed her mouth to his and finally, blessedly stopped remembering anything.

The taste of the wine in his mouth, the feel of his leg sliding against hers. The sudden shift as he rolled so that he was atop her, his mouth sliding down to bite at her throat just below where it met her jaw. Her hands finding him through the thatch of hair between his legs, gliding up and down so that she could hear his groan. There was something so beautiful in the way the smallest move of her fingers encircling him could make a sound that would roll through his chest so that she could hear it while she bit and licked at his stomach.

His hands were as strong as she’d expected, and despite the callouses his fingers were both deft and light as they parted the folds around her hard clit, stroking it. _You’ve done that before_, she thought but could not say, could only pant and hiss as they brought her further along. Her own hands were cupping him, stroking him from base to tip, making him ragged as he moved back up to capture her mouth with his, or perhaps it was her capturing him.

“Kassandra.” He grunted it. “I want…”

“Do it. Do it now.” She rolled her hips, her thighs corded as they parted. She almost screamed when his fingers stopped, but she knew what was coming, took her hands off of his cock and felt him shift. It was the first time she’d been with someone who could kiss her and still reach her there and she growled into his mouth as he parted her, slid inside and brought his thumb to again stroke at her clit with his first thrust.

He was so busy trying to hold back that he didn’t realize she was about to move until there he was, again on his back, her hips flush against his and her whole glorious body above him on display in the moonlight. The first time he’d seen her she’d been lit by the flames of a burning warehouse in Korinthia, orange and gold flickering across the iron muscles of her arms, a _linothorax_ covering her. Now…

She reminded him of the lions that prowled the south of Argos, sleek, each sinew bunching under the skin. There were scars, a line of them just under her breasts, others on her abdomen and collarbone, they did nothing but accent the perfection of her in the silver light. It was as if Selene was gazing as he was, both of them awestruck at the mixture of power and grace as she rolled her hips and made him almost lose himself right there.

She dropped down, biting at his neck, sucking at his chest. He slid his hand to the base of her head and kissed her, harder now, as hard as he’d ever kissed anyone. His previous lovers, he’d always worried he’d hurt them, even his shield-brother Phylas he’d had to hold back. If anything, this time he felt that Kassandra was the one restraining herself, and knowing it meant he could finally let himself go. Wrap his arms around her and turn, now both on their sides, and simply let himself be carried away by how close he was, how much he wanted it, the ache for release.

He managed to find her clit again, this time with his fingers, and moved in time with her panting, the soft gasps and groans and hisses as she got closer. Her eyes were huge in the dark, almost bronze in what little moonlight reached them, and she rolled her head back and shuddered for him, holding back a scream.

He knew he couldn’t so he buried his face where her neck joined her shoulder and filled his mouth with her, bit down and howled into her. Her legs wrapped so tightly around him he felt like he might lose a rib.

They lay still for a long moment, both of them breathing heavily, before she finally loosened her legs and rolled away, onto her back. One of her arms was around him, her hand idly playing in his hair and he marveled at the way it felt, the gentle fluttering of her fingers against him.

He watched her, her closed eyes, the way she rose and fell with each breath. The way he’d watched her on the docks outside that burning warehouse while she spoke. _I was Spartan, once._

*

Kassandra woke when the sky first began to lighten, dawn still to come.

Brasidas was laying next to her, propping his head up on his right hand. He smiled at her and she wondered what she looked like, her hair likely a mess, bed marks on her face. He didn’t seem to mind what he saw.

“So, this is… was my room.”

“It’s nice.” He didn’t take his eyes off of her and she wanted to pull her braid over and cover her face with it. She wished she’d taken it down before they’d… well. She hadn’t, so now she was sure it was a mass of escaping strands. “Are you hungry?”

She opened her mouth to answer and they both felt the gurgle of her stomach answering for her. He laughed and she grimaced at herself.

“The answer seems to be yes.”

“Is there food here, or should we…”

“I… don’t want to get up yet.” She shifted. “Unless you’re in a hurry.”

“I can wait.” He smiled back. "I'm in no hurry."


	2. The lost chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brasidas and Kassandra, happy, and then...

The night was just touched by cold and the sky was beautiful, the stars dancing over the world, and she felt safe and at peace with his arm around her, her arm reaching above her head to encircle his neck, both of them just laying there in the grass staring up at the moon. Luna danced in her chariot above them and it felt like it was for them and them alone, like she’d seen them together and stopped to watch.

It was the third full moon she’d seen since she’d returned to Sparta from Arkadia with the true name of the Cultist and all the evidence from Lagos and Stentor she’d needed to convince the Ephors. The third since she had invited Brasidas to share wine in her house and…

“What are you thinking?” His voice was hushed but she could feel it in her back, and there was a touch of gooseflesh where his hand was trailing up and down her ribcage.

“That wine you brought me, when…” His fingers traced a spot between her breast and her ribs and she shivered, arched her neck up and bit at him just hard enough to reward him. “I’ve tried to find it since. They never seem to have it at the Agora.”

“I may have misled you.” He brushed his face against the nape of the neck. “I got the amphora at the Agora. The wine I had for a while. It was a gift from Lagos.”

“Ah.” She leaned more fully against him. “Where did he get it?”

“It’s from Messenia. They grow it in the mountains.” His voice grew quiet, as if he was afraid of someone hearing them speaking. She found that amusing – anyone close enough to hear them could likely _see_ them, laying naked under Selene with the hill sloping down to the Aegean beneath them. “I don’t know why but the mountains make me think of you.”

“Cold, hard, and dangerous to climb?”

“Strong, beautiful, and worth the effort.”

“Who taught you how to talk? I thought Spartans preferred a war cry to a speech.”

“No one has ever called five words a speech.”

"That was six." He pretended to scowl and she held back a laugh, traced down his nose with a finger.

He brushed her lips with his and she parted, darted her tongue out and there his was and for a while she lost herself in the sensation of it. It felt like sparring, sometimes, like testing herself against him. His hand slid up from her side across her breast, and her nipple hardened before it moved away, up to brush across her throat. Her skin felt the flush of warmth as his fingers traced across her, and she slid her own hand across the hard muscle of his chest, scraping her nails just enough to make him groan.

She broke the kiss to look at him, to really look at the way his face looked with the light full on it. She was always surprised at how warm his eyes were.

“Should…” He swallowed. “Should I be getting you back home?”

“I have been making my own decisions on where I sleep and who with for quite some time. My _mater_ knows not to wait up.”

“I just don’t want her to think…”

“She had two children. I’m sure she knows exactly what we do.” She laughed at the look of chagrin on his face. “Did you really think otherwise?”

“No one wants to think too closely about what their lover’s mother thinks about it.” He smiled a sheepish little grin at her. It made her laugh again, and then she bit the side of his neck and mock-growled into his throat, little laughs bubbling out of her.

“I don’t ask her where she spends _her_ nights, you know.”

“Why don’t we change the subject?” He shifted and his arm more fully encircled her. “You know I have a perfectly good bed back at my perfectly good house, where I live alone.”

“I was aware of this.” She looked up at the moon, listened to the faint sound of wolves off in the hills above them. When they’d ridden out it has been a moment’s fancy for her, a chance to see the region without hunting down rogue _Krypteia_ or otherwise looking for trouble. “It was a nice night, and…”

“I wasn’t complaining.”

“Wise.” Another kiss and then she settled herself against him, loving how pointless her life currently felt. Sooner or later the war or the Cult would rear up one of the thousands of heads she would have to go strike down, or he’d head off to a new battlefield somewhere, but for now she felt content to drift and let the wind steer her. It felt good not to know what was coming, for good or for ill. In her experience, usually ill. She saw a shadow pass over the moon and knew it for Ikaros, hunting in the dark. _He thinks he’s an owl now._

They lay on the wolf-fur cloak he’d laid beneath them and let the night happen, and she nearly fell asleep when he spoke again.

“I did have a subject to speak to you about.” It was subtle, the way he shifted. Almost drawing himself in, centering himself. She tilted her head to look up at him, curious. “You know, I am above thirty.”

“I did indeed know that.”

“I am not married.”

“Again, yes, this is information I had.” She leaned back to really look at him. He met her gaze, as he always did, and she could see… well, if it wasn’t Brasidas she was looking at she would have sworn he was nervous. But she’d seen him fight and he certainly hadn’t been nervous then.

“I am required, by law, to find a wife.” He swallowed but kept his gaze on her. “And I suspect you will say no, and I know you have your reasons, but… I wanted you to know that I was yours to refuse. That if you were willing, there is no other I would want over you.”

She felt the words, the way they felt almost physical, like they’d slid in between them and pushed them apart. She drew her legs under herself and released him to stand up, naked under the stars and not even slightly concerned that some sheep herder might be able to see her.

“You…” She blinked, words suddenly hard to force past lips that had not been dry a minute before. “Are you mad? Me? I would be the worst… why would _anyone_ want to do that with me?”

“You are beautiful, strong, brilliant, and cunning. I’ve seen you dispatch thugs and lead battles, outmaneuver those looking for your head and even trick a king. Even here, where our women know their worth, you stand out. Why would I want anyone else now that I’ve been with you?” He stayed on the cloak, laying naked and looking up at her. “Do you really not know this? Even Gorgo in her prime couldn’t match you. No one ever could.”

Her mouth hung open. She only snapped it shut when she realized she must look like a simpleton standing there, turned and paced in the grass.

Laying on his back, he forced himself to wait and felt like every step she took was flaying hide off of him. It had only been three months, but… sooner or later he had needed to have this talk, he only had so much time.

“I… cannot stay in Sparta and keep your house. But… even then, I…” She looked up. “Do you know what you’re asking? What I would be… what _we_ would be expected to do?”

“Live, be there for each other? Support one another? Join our households? I don’t care that you would be elsewhere, so long as you came back to me. We can pay someone to watch the house, it’s not very big.”

“That’s not the problem.”

“Then please tell me what it is, because I can’t say why it isn’t until I know.”

“_Children, _Brasidas.” She snapped at him, her arms folded across her chest, a mix of irritation and despair on her face. “I would be expected to…”

“You don’t want to?”

“If it were just you and I? Perhaps.” Her eyes were darting around, looking from him to the moon and stars and back again, her brows high and her forehead furrowed. “I do not hate the idea, now that I’ve thought it. But… not when it isn’t and can never be just you and I.”

“You think Myrrine would have difficulty?”

“Hah. No, not at all. _Mater_ would be beside herself, she would be thrilled. But…” She turned to look across the land, towards where Taygetos loomed like the broken teeth of Gaia herself. “They walked Alexios and I up that mountain. They _threw him off_. On the say-so of someone who’d never met him, they threw my baby brother off a fucking mountain.”

“But that…”

“They do it _every day_.” She turned to face him. “When _mater_ and I arrived, we rode up from the harbor. I saw boys, skinny things, shivering in filthy exomis. Holding spears I wouldn’t use for kindling. There was a pack of wolves.” He sat up, finally understanding where she was inside her head, wanting to speak but not wanting to interrupt her. “I wanted to step in. To stop it. _Mater_ said I couldn’t, that it was… she stopped me long enough that by the time I’d decided to act it was too late. Two of the boys were dead. They were dead because I didn’t stop it.”

“You would have dishonored them.” He tried to be gentle. “We all go through it. I went through it.”

“It’s _wrong.”_ Brasidas had seen Kassandra take a burning arrow to the chest and keep fighting, had seen her break a man’s neck with one hand while parrying a sword-strike with another. She rarely complained and he’d never seen her admit to pain, but there was pain in her voice now. “When I found myself on Kephallonia, I had no one. Markos, but he was worse than useless. It was me and Ikaros, fighting, killing, surviving. I hunted rodents. I fought wolves, by myself. Some of them four legged, others two.”

She stared into his eyes and he could see it, almost pleading with him but too proud to let herself.

“What are you saying?”

“If I said yes, you could never have children. Not with me. Because I _won’t_ give them to Sparta. I won’t do it. Parents… parents should protect their children, should love them. Not send them off to be fed to wolves if they’re unlucky. Not throw them off a mountain because someone says so, or leave them to die on a hillside because they’re not big enough, not strong enough. And I know you. You are Spartan down to your toes, you love Sparta. You could never…”

He waited, but she didn’t say anything else. She dropped her gaze, and then busied herself finding her clothes – her chiton, her linothorax and belt and greaves, the hood and shawl that went around her head and shoulders. He wanted to say she was wrong, to tell her it didn’t matter, but he would be lying. It did matter.

“I will never give Sparta children. It eats too many as it is.”

She strode over to Phobos and swung her leg up over the horse’s broad back, looked back at him and the look she gave him was so sad, so hopeless that he finally managed to get to his feet, but then she was off, gone before he could even think of what to do, what to say to fix it. He’d thought she would say no because she wanted her freedom, but hadn’t thought of this, hadn’t come up with any argument to counter it. It had simply never occurred to him.

_Fool. Of course she hates us. We threw her away. Her, of all people. Practically a goddess, like Atalanta reborn, and we discarded her._

He got dressed in silence. There was no one there to speak to, anyway, and he’d missed his chance when it mattered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be more of this when I get it finished, I have more in mind for Kassandra and Brasidas, both before and after Pylos and then before Amphipolis. It's kind of sad this chapter but it'll get better before, well, we all know how Amphipolis goes.


	3. Labyrinths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Escaping from her feelings, Kassandra finds it's easier to fight a myth than deal with what she wants.

She bent backwards and the massive labrys sliced through the air where her head had been, crashing so hard into the stone pillar that it shattered into fragments. The smell of it, the hot rush of its breath as it went crashing past her hit like a fist, oppressive and rank. The Leonidas spear was up and in her hand, swept in an arc and bit deep into the thing’s side as it passed her.

She rolled away, coming to her feet with the broken spear clenched in white fingers. Her helmet was gashed in the side and she could hear her own breathing, loud inside the bronze. She was glad she hadn’t worn a hood today, glad for the Spartan bronze breastplate and greaves. As fast as she was, it was terrifyingly quick with that massive axe.

She still couldn’t believe she was seeing it. She walked to the left, keeping her eyes on it – on the curved Aurochs horns rising up out of the bull’s head atop that massive neck, its shoulders and chest pelted with thick hair. It seems to have trouble standing upright, resting the labrys on the ground while it pounded the floor around her, and she remembered again finding Nikias’ crushed corpse in the labyrinth on her way in.

The floor shook under her feet and she saw it drop its head and charge in.

She waited until it was almost on top of her then jumped forward, placing her left hand on the big glowing horn and flipping herself up and over it, like she’d seen on the murals painting the walls above their heads in the ruined halls of Knossos. It tossed its head, trying to gore her, and she used that, tucked herself into a tight roll that went sailing right over it and driving the splintered spear down. It glowed with that strange power she barely understood, the power that seemed part of her. Surrounding her, suffusing her, pulsing in time with her heart hammering away in her ribcage.

It slammed home in the creature’s spine and it screamed, a sound so loud she winced at it, and crashed hard into the ground. The body slid through another pillar, showering the round chamber in rock shards. She kept rolling, almost somersaulting to absorb the force of those massive neck muscles and finally came to her feet ready for it to rise and charge her again.

Instead it simply lay there.

She stared at it for a long, long time.

“I killed the _malakes_ Minotaur.” The words started hushed and turned into a whoop of joy by the end of the sentence. “_Mater _would be so proud!”

Realizing there was no one there but her, she felt sheepish, but the giddiness was like she’d gone out invoking Dionysos all night, flooding her with near-manic excitement. She bent, as she had in Boeotia, and found the glowing horn and wrenched at it with both hands. It took several pulls before it finally tore free, and she could have sworn she heard a whispering voice just over her shoulder.

_Give us strength, when all of ours is gone…_

Light headed, she looked back, but there was nothing there, and when she looked down at her hand the horn had changed shape, becoming an orb just as the ornament from the Sphinx had. Then she took a moment to breathe, looking around the chamber.

She remembered an argument she’d had once with Phoibe.

_They say it’s a plague and they need help from the gods._

_“_I told you.” Her voice was sad and affectionate, the memory of the girl so sharp she nearly bled from it. “I’m not a god.”

Gathering herself, she made her way out of the chamber and began the long climb upwards.

*

Days later, she saw Gytheion from the _Adrestia_ and sighed.

The boy Ardos had taken the news of his father’s death hard, although presenting him with Nikias’ ring had at least eased the blow somewhat. She’d felt awkward leaving him with his old caretaker, but what else could she do? Bring him with her? She didn’t even know for sure where _she_ belonged, much less a child she barely knew and who would likely not fare well in Sparta. At least Crete was familiar to him, and he had someone to watch over him. It was better than some got.

Herodotus had spent hours asking her questions about the orb she retrieved from the Minotaur, questions she had no real answer for and not much interest in. All her thoughts were on returning to Sparta, to seeing those most important to her – at least the ones who weren’t already on the _Adrestia_, anyway. Part of her wished she could just usher Herodotus down through the seething pools of liquid rock and fire and have Pythagoras explain himself, not that the old man was likely to tell Herodotus any more than he’d told Kassandra.

The deck of the ship swayed in the chop as they turned to approach the dock. She remembered her first time on the _Adrestia_, how sick she’d felt as it lurched in the sea foam. Now, she barely noticed it. Her thoughts were elsewhere, racing ahead of the ship.

When they finished tying off she turned to Barnabas, finding a smile at the sight of him waiting by her side. Save Ikaros, Barnabas may well have been the person she most relied on, the one she could always count on the most, without complicated feelings clashing against each other. He was just there, her _triearchos, _her friend, her loyal shadow.

“Will you be all right here?”

“They’re more hospitable here than in Sparta itself. Not too many _Spartiates_ come down here, mostly _Perioeci_ or _Helotes_.” Barnabas shook his head. “I know who to talk to, and the crew will welcome a chance to spend some of that drachmae you’re too free with.”

“It’s only money.” She laughed at herself, because anyone who’d ever hired her knew that Kassandra neither came cheap nor accepted haggling. But by now, she had more work than she knew what to do with, and her success in Boeotia and the Olympics had made her a name throughout Hellas. Long gone were the days when she worried about collecting enough drachmae to pay off a one-eyed bandit lord. “Besides, it’s worthless in Sparta anyway.”

“You can still spend it in Gytheion.” Barnabas chuckled. “Go, I know you have those you miss in the city. We’ll be fine.”

“I’ll send word if we need to go anywhere.”

“I’ll keep the ship ready.” He clapped his hand on her shoulder. “All will be well, Kassandra. Go on.”

Phobos awaited her on the dock when she finally stepped down off of the _Adrestia_, his hair freshly groomed by one of the younger of the crew who’d taken a liking to him. Truth was, Phobos was the greatest thing Markos had ever owned, and every day Kassandra was glad she’d taken the horse from him – fool that he was, he would long since have lost such a fine mount in a scheme too stupid to be believed. She didn’t like how she felt whenever she remembered Markos. She knew she owed him a lot, but he’d long since gotten back ten, maybe a hundred times what his meager efforts had cost him. Without a doubt, her life had improved without him in it.

She mused on that as she rode north. Markos, she felt nothing but relief at the idea of never seeing him again, even with the slight fondness she felt for the memory of the man. But Brasidas…

_You left it poorly._

She remembered that night, of course. She remembered everything, it was why she held such excellent grudges. And since that night, she’d been doing a lot of remembering, and never did she once remember anything that made the idea of never seeing him again feel like anything but a loss. Even the aggravating loyalty to Sparta that meant it could never happen was something that made her lip quirk into a smile, even the way he’d lay there so sure he could _fix_ their problems… they were part of him, and she could never believe she was better off without him.

_Now, he may well be better off without me_.

It had been almost a month since she’d left, riding down to Gytheion racing against the rising sun, wanting desperately to be away. She’d scribbled a letter at the dock and paid a boy to deliver it to Myrrine and then she’d set sail, first to Kythera and then to Crete, pursuing Pythagoras’ almost forgotten tasks. Everything about Pythagoras felt unreal to her, and if she hadn’t collected that orb from the beast in the labyrinth she didn’t know if she’d believe it really happened. Thinking about Atlantis or the Isu or a fucking _Minotaur_ felt like dreaming.

_Save that when you dream it’s his arms around you under the moon and a different answer._

Phobos nearly flew to Sparta, she imagined him with wings like Pegasos springing from the decapitated Medusa’s neck. If there was a Minotaur and a Sphinx, who knew what else there might be? The sun was setting behind Taygetos and she deliberately didn’t look, didn’t want to see the mountain capped in red. It loomed too large in her mind as it was.

By the time she’d ridden Phobos up to the post in front of her mother’s house… and oh, it was never going to be _hers_ and that upset her in ways she didn’t want to understand… the sky was deepening from blue toward indigo, the red line along the western horizon behind the mountains thin as a blade’s edge. She patted Phobos’ neck appreciatively, rubbed him down, made sure he had food and access to the nearby field if he wanted it, and then walked with tired feet to the door of the hourse.

“…so yes, I must leave.” His voice, coming out the door. She knew it was silly, but it stopped her, and she flattened out against the wall. “I just thought you should know.”

“I thank you, Brasidas. But perhaps you shouldn’t go. Deimos is…”

“I’m sorry, Myrrine. I know what he means to you. And to her. But the situation at Pylos is desperate, and it could cost us the war. I _must_ go, Deimos or no Deimos.” He exhaled. “Tell her I wish I could have stayed until she returned.”

“You did.” She stepped around and into the doorway. He turned, and for a moment there they both were, her mother and Brasidas again as they’d been atop that hill in Arkadia. Back then it had merely been an Archon trying to kill them. “I overheard Deimos, and Pylos. What’s happening?”

“Disaster.” He met her gaze, just like he always did. She realized now how much she loved that, that he never flinched away from her like so many did. Even now, he looked her straight in the eyes as he spoke. “The Athenians have managed to trap hundreds of _Spartiates_, with over fifty ships. Overwhelming numbers from Demosthenes.”

“Ah shit.” She rubbed at her head. “Of all the… he’s one of the few they have with the will to fight and the wit to outmaneuver.” Her feet wouldn’t move, and her mouth wouldn’t say what she _wanted_ to say. “When do you leave?”

“Now. Tonight.” He reached down to the helmet he’d left on the table. “I wish I could stay longer. But my ship is already waiting for me and I was to be on it already.” He placed the helmet on his head, nodded to Myrrine, and walked towards the door. She didn’t expect him to stop there, but he did, his eyes still on hers. “I’m glad you’re well. Hopefully I’ll see you when I return.”

She didn’t trust herself to speak. Instead she nodded, and then watched him walk off, his back stiff as a spear. Only once he was gone down the hill and out of sight did she release the breath she’d been holding and turn to face her mother, and worse, her mother’s furrowed brow and tilted head.

She fought for something to say.

“Deimos is there?”

“The rumor is, yes. Supposedly he came in with Demosthenes’ ships. He’s the Athenian’s champion. A force of nature. No one can stand against him.” Her mother sounded proud and aggrieved at once. “So close, and yet gone from me.”

Kassandra’s mind was racing, remembering the cave underneath Delphi. The arrow he’d fired to get her attention on Andros, the feel of his hand slapping across her face. The sneering as he cut Pericles’ throat and walked away. _Stay out of my way_. She knew with dismal certainty that as good as he was, Brasidas didn’t stand a chance against her brother. Only one person did.

“If they fight…” She looked down at her hand. “I have to go.”

“What?”

“If he’s at Pylos, if I can reach him, talk to him…”

“You can bring him back.” Myrrine put her hands on either side of Kassandra’s face. “Lamb, you can bring him back to us. You must.”

Even though it was what she had been thinking herself her mouth opened and her head swum with answers. It didn’t feel possible. Worse, she couldn’t focus on it, because every time she tried she imagined Brasidas meeting Deimos across the battlefield and then her mind would rebel and those memories of watching him kill Pericles would hit her full in the face. What her mother was asking… it was impossible. Deimos was too far gone. It would be safer for her, for Sparta, for _Brasidas_ if she just…

_The baby in her arms, so small, his eyes so bright. His mouth open, cooing, his little hand on her cheek. The first new thing, her brother, his fingers curling around a strand of her hair. The noise he made when he recognized her. _

“I’ll bring him home.”

“You _must_. We can be a family again.” Kassandra looked into her mother’s eyes and knew it couldn’t happen, knew he’d never come with her, and nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise next chapter will be more relaionship (and sexytimes) focused.


	4. I could not forget a day of you

Brasidas felt every step he took towards his home. He had to gather a few things before heading to his ship, although none of them were fools enough to try and break the Athenian blockade. No, he’d sail to Alpeia Port and then sneak overland, bypass the Athenian lines. The day he couldn’t evade a few sentries…

Well. It wasn’t getting there that concerned him. It was what to do once he was there.

The fact was, those Spartiates at Pylos were doomed. But the Ephors and the Kings simply couldn’t accept that. Pleistoanax had only been returned to his throne with the disappearance of Pausanias, and the Agiad King sat uncomfortably on the throne with Leonidas’ daughter and granddaughter in Sparta. His cousins, his rivals – he wanted an end to the war, a peace negotiated with Athens, and Brasidas might have agreed with him but he certainly wasn’t going to let him use Sparta’s soldiers as tools. Archidamos’s son Agis II wanted them rescued, and the Ephors agreed with him. And so, once again Brasidas was given his orders.

He walked into his house, sighed. Seeing her outside Myrrine’s house… he’d wanted to stay, to talk to her. The words they hadn’t spoken since she’d left Sparta the month before. There was so much he wanted to say, and yet, he didn’t know what it was. Seeing her had brought it all into sharp focus, because she was right. He _was_ Spartan, it defined him. It made him who he was. Could you love a country and love someone who had such good reason to hate it?

_Did_ he love her?

He busied himself making sure he had he few things he needed, looking to the shelf with an eagle feather she’d given him. Ikaros lost a few from time to time. It went into his exomis under his breastplate, where it would stay secure enough. He turned, preparing to extinguish his lamp and leave, and there she was in his doorway.

He was impressed. He hadn’t heard her, and he was a hard man to sneak up on.

Her eyes were in shadow, and he couldn’t tell what the expression on her face was. She was wearing the leather breastplate with the shawl over the shoulders clasped in front that he’d seen her wearing the night she left, and her lips were pursed tight.

“Kassandra. I didn’t…”

“Don’t leave.” She took a step into the house. She’d been there many times and it always changed the way it felt, the house expanding to contain her.

“I have to.”

“Stay for tonight. I can get you there faster than any ship you’ve chartered. You’re going to try and go overland from Arpeia. The _Adrestia_ can just go straight there.”

“The Athenians…”

“There isn’t a ship on the Aegean that can catch us. I got past the Athenians on Delos and Naxos. I smuggled Aspasia out of Athens with their ships everywhere. I promise you, if you still want to go to Pylos, I will get you there faster than you would have if you leave now.” Now that he could see her eyes, like polished jet in the lamplight, he felt how impossible it would be to leave.

He gestured to a set of chairs in the corner of the room, moved to sit. She did so as well. It felt strange to be alone with her with his armor on, after so many nights spent together, the months after the return from Arkadia.

“I was afraid I’d leave before you came back.”

“I’m sorry I left things the way I did.” There was a way Kassandra had of focusing on a thing, or a person, of giving total attention while never ignoring the world around her. She was doing it now and it made him remember seeing her do it – inside the burning warehouse in Korinthia, on the road in Arkadia, that first night they’d been together. Even when something threatened her she was always totally present, totally engaged. “I should have waited, calmed down.”

“It may have been for the good.”

“Why would it be good?”

“When I made the offer, I hadn’t considered the things you said.” He looked over at the doorway, at the night outside. “To me, it’s always been how things are. It is how I was raised, how everyone I know was raised. And I knew quite a few boys who didn’t come back from it.” He felt a tightness in his chest. “This war… the secret of Sparta has always been that we can win every battle, because we have the best soldiers. But we can’t do what Athens does, or Boeotia, or Argos. We can’t lose a battle. We can’t afford to. Because even in victory, we lose Spartiates, and we can’t get them back fast enough.”

She didn’t speak, inclining her head and knowing she was listening pushed the words out of him.

“It is hard for me to admit it. That we’re _wrong_, the way we live. The way we raise our children, the way we try and keep the _helotes_ down, but it’s like I said to you in Arkadia. I’ve seen enough blood for two lifetimes. Some of it has been on my hands. The very thing you’re afraid of is why we’re weak. Every _Spartiate_ who lives to adulthood and picks up a spear and fights for Sparta, it took two more dying to get there. Even if we beat Athens, which we will, it comes at a cost we can’t pay.”

He’d stood up without realizing it, was pacing in front of her now.

“So you were right. We can’t give children to Sparta. We can’t get married just because Sparta demands it.”

“Yes.” She stood up and her face was blank, impassive. He’d expected that, which is why he’d paced over to the door, to make sure she couldn’t get out immediately. Kassandra was many things, but she was prone to immediate action. “We can’t. I should…”

“We should get married because I love you.”

Brasidas decided he’d remember this moment for a very long time. The look of surprise that crept over that magnificent face of hers.

“What?”

“I’ve been talking to Myrrine.”

“Did she threaten you?”

“No, she helped me understand some things. Stories about her own life. She’s a remarkable woman, like her daughter.”

“Is it possible you could explain faster?”

“It’s simple. Do you love me, Kassandra?” He braced himself for this answer, because while he hoped he knew it, there was always the possibility he’d misjudged things.

“I have not been able to forget a day with you since I left.” She gestured, sweeping her hand in front of her. “The way you can frustrate me with reason when I just want to solve things with my blade. The way you make me want to laugh in the middle of a rage. The touch of your hands in the dark. There was a woman on Kythera, a Cultist. Beautiful, a hint of arrogance. Before, I would have… and I didn’t even want her, because she wasn’t you. Because you were in my thoughts I saw right through her.” She tossed that braid of hers. “Yes. Yes, I do. Sometimes I wish I didn’t. But I do.”

“The world is a big place. We don’t have to stay in Sparta. But… I think, if we did, it would be for the best. For us, for this place. We, _you_ could change it. Both of the Kings fear you, for different reasons – Pleistoanax because you threaten his position, Agis…”

“Agis is a puppy with a crush.” She shook her head. “He’ll remember his wife and heirs in time and give up the dream of a Eurypontid/Agiad heir.”

“Regardless, the Ephors know you. The Kings know you. Your name is being whispered, stories of you and what you’ve done. If you stay here, if you say ‘no’ to them… but none of that matters to me, really.”

“It doesn’t?”

“All that matters is you.” He stepped closer. “I have loved Sparta all of my life. I have given it all a man can be asked to give. I’ve done what I was asked to do. After this war is over, I am entitled to something for myself. And I hope that will be with you.”

She stared at him and shook her head, but stepped closer, close enough that they could almost touch.

“You’re an idiot. I’ll make you miserable.”

“So far that hasn’t been the case.”

“I’ll fight you all the time.”

“You only fight me when you’re sure you are right. Usually you are.” He stepped a little closer. Now he could almost feel the warmth of her.

“My life is impossible. You would do well to flee from it.” She shook her head but didn’t pull away. “My insane brother is the reason we’re even going to Pylos tomorrow, the Cult, my… everything about me. There are countless women in Sparta who’d marry you, give you children, run your estate and never once trouble you.”

“I’m sure they could be counted.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Indeed. Sparta does not lack for strong willed, beautiful women who would have me, and live the life of a Spartan matriarch. I am not blind to myself.” His hand reached out and stopped so close to her face and it felt like a lodestone pulling on iron. “But you… when I’m with you, when I think about you, when I remember what we’ve seen and done together, none of them matter. None of them compare to you. They never could, Kassandra of House Agiad.” His hand traveled the last little distance and felt her skin, the smoothness of her cheek. Her eyes locked on him. “It’s you I love.”

“You should run.” She stepped into his arms, her hand on his, her eyes half-lidded now.

“But I won’t.”

“You’re wearing too much.” Her voice rasped, lovely and warm, rich as honey. “You should fix that.”

*

He took his time touching her. There was a livid mark on her chest, a bruise that was already turning purple and yellow, and it was tender to the touch so he kissed it softly so it didn’t hurt her.

“You were busy, I see.”

“I think best when I’m active.” She grazed her lips across his throat, then slid her leg up against his side. Every touch almost hesitant. “And I needed to think.”

He slid down her belly, trailing kisses, and smiled at the gasping sounds she made as he reached the folds of her labia. There was a surge up his spine at her every intake of breath, a thrill at every moan and pant. She tasted uniquely her, unlike anyone else he’d ever used his mouth on, and he dragged it out, scraping his tongue slowly over the hardening clitoris framed by his fingers. Despite them only having a few hours before sunrise, hurry seemed impossible. A waste of the gift before him.

Even when her legs locked together around his neck and he could feel the iron of her thighs twitch, he kept to his pace, but added a finger, slid it up slowly into the depths of her. She keened at him, convulsed slightly and arched, her muscles etched in firelight from the lamp on the table.

He knew eventually his neck and tongue would grow tired. Even lasting this long against those legs felt like a small victory. He added his thumb, caressing her while he rested for a moment, keeping her on the edge. He’d dreamed about this for a month now, getting to watch her like this.

“Enough.” She gasped it, parted her legs and reached down to place her hands on either side of his head. “Up. Now.”

He let her pull him, slid upward until they were face to face and she kissed him hard enough that he had to fight for breath, her legs wrapping around his sides and squeezing, hard, small quakes rocking through her. They parted long enough for him to get air and for her hand to slide down his stomach and grasp him, hard as he was, and stroke gently.

He let her decide when he entered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have more but I might do it as a separate post, because I like where this one ends.


	5. The wounds of Pylos

She drove the kopis through a man’s neck and danced away from a spear thrust.

The woods were on fire all around them, and the phalanx simply hadn’t lasted. Unlike the Hot Gates, there was no way to prevent the Athenian’s superior numbers from being brought to bear, and the Spartan forces had broken under the sheer weight of their enemies. It was what they’d both expected as soon as they’d seen the encampment, the few bedraggled troops waiting for reinforcements that couldn’t reach them.

“You take this boat away as soon as we disembark.” She’d said it to Barnabas in a tone that would not argue, and so he’d nodded unhappily.

“It’s a ship.”

“Boat, ship, or floating crane, you leave.” She’d been staring at the Athenian ships, so many of them. Barnabas had picked his approach well, using nearby islands to conceal the _Adrestia_. The Athenians were on the watch for a Spartan fleet, hoping to engage and destroy it in battle, not one ship slicing like a dagger through the waves. That had been their advantage.

It had been the last one they had.

She parried a sword with her own and drove the Leonidas spear into a man’s neck. Feeling it burn in her fingers, a heat so intense it should have brought pain, instead of the cold clarity and implacable fury. She did not feel fear for herself. No, all her fear was for him.

They’d stood shoulder to shoulder in the lines, despite a few voices raised in doubt. Spartan women were not known to wilt at danger, but neither did they fight in the army, and while some had heard of her – granddaughter of Leonidas, the bearer of Zeus’ eagle, a modern day Atalanta and more whispers besides – others still doubted. Those doubts faded with the first crash of shield against shield, the lashing of her spear over the rim.

But once the lines had broken and the flames surrounded them, it was just chaos. She’d dropped the shield – she’d never liked phalanx fighting, even though Nikolaos had taught it to her. A shield made her too slow. She preferred the Leonidas spear in her left hand and a blade in her right.

_Where is he_?

She remembered the night before, the two of them staring out where the Athenians were camped. So many. She had a strange sense of finality, wondered if it was how her grandfather had felt. Looking out over them, she’d been keenly aware of Brasidas, of the look on his face. The way he could feel fear and still act, still prepare himself. The words they’d exchanged before leaving Sparta.

_If this is where it ends, I can accept it._ His eyes looking down at her, after they’d spent themselves, his arms wrapped around her. His face both solemn and beautiful. _I never expected to get this much._

She tore a man from throat to navel with the broken spear, kicked him into another Athenian. Her nerves were crackling like the flames all around them, almost frantic. She didn’t know where he was, everything was drowned out in screaming and chaos and the sound of wood exploding from within as fire spread everywhere. Why had the Athenians done this? It _hampered_ them, made fighting even more dangerous.

She rescued a Spartan from three of them, lashing out with a chain of strikes that brought them low before they even recognized they were in danger from her, but it wasn’t him. Just some other Spartan. She wheeled, avoided a spear, broke it with her arm. The Athenian barely had time to realize how impossible that was before she thrust the kopis into his chest.

Then she saw the thing she was most afraid of.

It was happening so fast, and there were so many in her way. She became a thing, no more conscious thought. Just a storm of blades, taking them in the chest, the neck, the throat. But beyond them, she saw Brasidas, his spear leveled, his shield before him as he charged.

And the man he charged at was her brother.

As always, the memories. Alexios wrapped in his blanket, cooing as she fed him his first mashed food, a paste of crushed olives and goat milk. Alexios laughing as they played the nose game, her pretending to take it. The day she’d killed Chrysis, after the madwoman revealed that they’d tortured her brother. _Life is pain. I gave him strength to cope._

Even while she weaved between thrusts, dispatching men two or three at a time, she couldn’t get there fast enough. Alexios… _Deimos_… took Brasidas’ leg out from under him with a single stroke, like a farmer killing a bullock. She saw him crash into the ground, and the last of the Athenians in her way fell as she ran.

“_Deimos!” _Her voice checked him mid-swing. He looked up at her, surprise briefly casting a shadow over his face before rage took its place. “This fight is between you and me.”

“And it is one you can not win.”

They stood there for a moment, the battle all around them, but avoiding them. The Athenians wanted no more of her, and the Spartans were just as eager to avoid him, leaving them to each other and the flames.

“If he dies…” She heard her voice break. “His blood is on your hands.”

“His, yours, and every one of your ‘_friends’.”_ He came at her so fast it was all she could do to send the sword stroke away with the Leonidas spear, and her counter lacked force – he sidestepped the kopis and pivoted, lashing out again. They both looked surprised when she went _under_ it.

“Are you mad? We can still stop!”

“We will _not_ stop!” For the next minute neither of them could speak. She had not fought like this, not ever – no one, from Kephallonia to Megaris, from Korinthia to Keos to Delos, none of the Cultists had been like this. Deimos… _Alexios_… was as much an out of control fire as the flames everywhere around them, his lack of a shield no hindrance at all. With the strange sword he used he was clearly a master, so expert at thrusts and sweeps that she found herself on the back foot again and again. Only the Leonidas spear and the strange way it just seemed to move, almost on its own, kept him away from her vitals.

For her part, when she managed a rare opening for a strike, she kept hesitating, waiting just a second too long. She didn’t want to kill Alexios. She’d promised her _mater_ she’d bring him home, but she had no idea how when he just kept attacking.

Out of sheer desperation she managed to tangle his sword with the spear, brought her face in close to his.

“If we continue this one of us will die.”

“Isn’t that the point?” He kicked at her and she moved backwards, staring at him across the gap. He couldn’t… somehow, despite everything, she’d wanted so badly to believe he was still Alexios, still her brother underneath it all. The man glaring at her, holding his sword at the ready… did she know him? Had she ever?

“I found _mater_.” Instead of recognition, softening, _anything_ it only made his face harder.

“Finally reunited, only to lose one another again!” He leapt, a move so familiar to her, and she prepared to try and take the strike, parry it somehow. She was so focused on him she didn’t notice how close they’d gotten to the flames until the tree dropped, smashing him from the air and crashing to the ground with him pinned under it.

It felt like a delusion. Like she was mad, as mad as the world. She remembered seeing Brasidas fall, seeing her brother the one who cut him down. Her hand tightened on the grip of the spear, but…

_You must bring him back._

In the agony of the moment she moved, looking for a place on the log that wasn’t burning. A way to lift it off of him, somehow. Before he…

The shadow of another falling tree, and just enough time to cover her head.

*

He woke up on a boat.

His leg was wounded, a deep cut to his thigh that just barely missed bone. It pulsed, with every breath, any time he moved. He’d had worse in his life, but it was bad.

Worse was the fact that no one knew what had happened to her.

Of the few who’d escaped and taken him with them, the stories were the same. She’d been a force of nature, and despite the Athenian numbers they’d started to believe victory was possible… until Deimos came, and the two of them fought their own battle.

Brasidas’ young doctor, if he was a doctor at all, had spoken about it in hushed tones.

“When I was a child, my mother had scrolls of Homer. The fighting of the heroes outside Troy. The way Aiantes fought, heedless. A god on his shoulder. They were like that. They disappeared into the flames and they were gone.”

The return to Sparta, he spent every moment in a fury. Furious at himself for falling, so he couldn’t walk, so he couldn’t go back for her. Furious at the Kings for sending him into a battle he couldn’t win, because he now knew they did it to get her to go. Furious at Sparta for putting their entire nation on the line and never once counting the cost, the numbers game that Sparta couldn’t ever win.

_She was right. Sparta eats its young. We could have matched the Athenians number for number, but instead how many die before they’re ever really alive?_

All the way back, all he could think about was her. With his leg wrapped up and almost useless, he presented himself to the Kings, who at least had the good sense to be gracious about the defeat. The fact that any of them had come home seemed miraculous.

Neither of them mentioned her.

He visited Myrrine that day, using an carved tree limb as a crutch. He’d opened his mouth to apologize to her, but she shook her head.

“I sent her there as much as you did.” They sat together for a while, her face as tight as a bow string. “She’s not dead. I would know. I would feel it.”

He didn’t say that she’d thought her daughter dead for years when she was alive because he was not by nature a cruel man, and he still blamed himself more than her.

Months passed and he mended. His leg was never going to be the same, but it could hold him up, and in time he could even run on it, make a shield charge again. He trained ruthlessly, the pain a goad. He’d fallen in seconds to her brother when he’d been whole, and if she was dead, it was her brother he’d need to find. He’d need to be able to kill a demigod.

So he trained. He trained past the point where the pain made his hands shake, where his entire body just wanted to slump to the ground. He trained until that leg could hold him up by itself, until the spear and shield again felt like part of him. He imagined her voice.

_Not bad for an old man. _Her hand in his hair. _Perhaps you’re up for a real test?_

His house felt empty and strange with her gone. She’d never actually _lived_ there, but she’d spent the night enough times, to the point where it was an open secret among his neighbors. Every day he would return to the house, imagining what they would have been doing that day. She enjoyed riding Phobos out into the countryside, and had talked him into it many times. Watching her hunt with her bow, that look of fierce concentration on her face, the eagle resting comfortably on her shoulder. He remembered asking about it.

_I have not known many who could keep an eagle._

_Oh, I don’t keep Ikaros._ She’d reached back to brush her knuckle up and down the bird’s feathers as it spread its wings to allow her better access. _If anything, he keeps me. _The rapt look on her face as she spoke, the bird moving itself fully into each gentle caress of her finger.

_But where did he come from?_

_My father sent him_. They’d not spoken much about that, yet. She had told him that Nikolaos had not sired her, but she was reluctant to speak about who had, and while she scoffed at the rumors she never contradicted them outright, either. For his part, Brasidas believed that if the man who’d sired her was fully human, then the divine blood in her had been awakened in some other way, especially now that he’d seen and fought Deimos himself. The man’s speed was inhuman. There was no other word for it, and that meant that the blood that traced from Zeus to Perseus to Heracles, to the Heraclids, to Agis I and the Agiads – that blood was fully awake in her.

It was strange to realize you were in love with a figure out of myth.

In many ways, there was nothing mythical about Kassandra. She ate wolfishly, as if afraid someone would try and steal her food. She belched, loudly. She drank far too much wine with her meals, and _strong_ wine, and when giddy with it would warble out songs she’d heard on the docks throughout the Greek world. She was ticklish, especially on the inside of her thigh or her armpit.

She was blunt, with an acid tongue and a gift for understatement that was thoroughly Spartan. No matter what life she’d lived – and for Brasidas, the life she’d lived sounded very much like the trials Spartiates were put through, forced to steal and kill and avoid being caught, save that her trials had lasted decades – there was something purely Spartan about her. The idea that they’d discarded _her _did more to prove to him that Sparta needed to change than a thousand speeches ever could.

In many ways she was the most human of anyone he’d ever met. Perhaps that was the secret to the demigods of old, perhaps they were simply more human. If Achilles walked ashore and challenged all comers to a duel, Brasidas would have bet his spear on her winning.

_She must be alive_, Myrrine said to him when he visited. He wished he knew. Every night that Selene was full, he would go out and sit under the light of the moon-chariot and he would look up and hope that somewhere, somehow, Kassandra was looking up too.

*

“So you understand?”

“Yes, Lysander.”

“We can’t spare any _Spartiates_ for this. It’ll be a ragtag group, mostly _helotes_ and allies.” Brasidas groaned internally. Lysander had the Kings’ ear, and he was usually right, but he couldn’t resist reiterating the same three or four points over and over again. “I understand some of the men you brought out of Pylos want to accompany you.”

“Forty of them, yes.” It was a pitiful band compared to the hundreds the Athenians had taken captive. There had been no demands, no real negotiations – Kleon was occupied with events at home and abroad, was trying to tighten his grip on far flung Mytilene. “I have the Kings permission to bring them.”

“You’ll need them. They can be the core of your force.” He shook his head. “If it were up to me… but the Ephors clutch their necklaces at the idea of losing more Spartiates so far from home. I say to them, if we lose Amphipolis now…”

Brasidas nodded. He’d been the one to _take_ Amphipolis for Sparta, years ago now. He didn’t need to be told how important it was.

After a few more minutes of Lysander posturing, he managed to extricate himself and headed home. The trip to Amphipolis would be long, and he couldn’t stop remembering the last night he’d had her there, the slow exploration of her in the dark. The day after on the ship, as her _triearchos_ pushed that ship well beyond what he’d ever believed possible.

He made sure his gear was in good order. His shield was battered but that was just superficial, it was as strong as it had ever been, and he had three good spears ready to take north. His armor was clean and ready. The truth was, with the absence of her, going off to fight was a welcome distraction. One could only note how empty their house felt so many times.

He made his way up the hill to Myrrine’s house to check in, as he had once a week since his return. He’d expected to find her outside, as she had found her own means to distract herself in growth and cultivation, but her bushes and vines were unattended and she was sitting at the table. He knocked at the door, even though it was open and she’d told him to come in a hundred times before.

“Myrrine, I just…”

“In.” She gestured, and he saw her clutching what appeared to be a parchment scroll, a small one. “Sit.”

He almost remarked that he wasn’t a dog, but the look on her face told him the humor would fall flat. She was on the verge of tears. But it didn’t quite seem sad, just emotional. He waited. She looked up at him finally, and yes, tears, but also a smile, relief like a sunrise across her features.

“She’s alive.” She held it out to him. “Read.”

His hands felt numb as he took it.

_Mater,_

_Much to say, not much time. I spoke to him, Alexios… Deimos, this is the name he uses. But I think I almost reached him, almost… right now, I am in Athens. I was in a cage, but Kleon grows overconfident. Too much is happening. Please, if you can, write back. Tell me if Brasidas… if he lives, please, I must know. I have a letter for him as well. I am hopeful I will be able to leave soon, to come see you. Right now Kleon must be dealt with, and without someone who knows which end of a spear goes where I fear these ‘rebels’ will spend all their time talking._

_Please be well. I will find you. As I did before._

_Kassandra_

Her writing was as strange as always, a mixture of the overly mannered Spartan style and the looser, more colloquial style of the Heptanese islands. He looked up from reading it to see Myrrine holding another sealed scroll, presenting it to him. He took it with hands that were shaking.

“I told you I would know.”

“So you did.” He was so relieved he could barely swallow, his mouth painfully dry. He decided he couldn’t wait and cracked the seal, opened it.

_To my stubborn idiot,_

_You had better be alive._

_I have seen your face whenever my eyes close for months now. I would see it with them open._

_Kassandra_

He laughed, shook his head. Turned his attention to Myrrine.

“Do you have writing tools? It appears I need to write back before I leave for Amphipolis and I don’t want to leave it until I return home.”

“I’ll get them for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter should be the last for this story, and I admit, I'm dreading it.


	6. Before dawn and ruin

The _Adrestia_ slipped past the ships battling at the entrance of the inlet that led to Amphipolis. The Athenians were hard contesting the polis, which wasn’t a surprise – not only was the city of immense strategic importance in terms of controlling both Makedonia and the nearby Thrakians, but there were both gold reserves and quite a lot of excellent wood for shipbuilding in the area.

Somewhere in the hills Kleon waited for his forces to grow to such numbers that he could repeat the Pylos disaster. It was the only way they knew how to beat the Spartans. Kassanda shook her head – either Kleon didn’t know that Brasidas was primarily in command of locals disenchanted with Athenian rule and former _Helotes_ who hoped their service would end in their freedom, or he was just that big a coward.

She’d left Athens as soon as his letter arrived, brought to her by a breathless messenger right to her hiding place inside Pericles’ old house. It was Alcibiades’ house now – technically it might have belonged to Aspasia, but rumors about her swirled throughout the city and no one contested Alcibiades claim on his uncle’s estate. There were rumors that Aspasia and her son Pericles the Younger were living in the house of Lysicles, but Kassandra had seen no sign of the woman during her own enforced stay in Athens. In truth, she hadn’t made much effort – thoughts of Aspasia brought thoughts of Phoibe, and thoughts of Phoibe brought pain even now.

Barnabas guided the ship through the water, avoiding several wrecks that littered the path towards the docks. This left her free to brood. The fight with Deimos at Pylos, followed by her imprisonment and the confrontation at her cell door, had left her badly shaken. In the weeks since escaping, she’d done her best to help the rebellious allies of Sokrates ruin Kleon’s reputation, all the while wishing she could just slip a blade in his throat. The look on Deimos’ face outside of her cell haunted her, the way he’d fought everything she said, but she’d seen him snap at Kleon.

_Maybe he’ll stay away. _

She wanted very badly for him to stay away, to refuse to prop Kleon up. In the nine years since she’d left Kephallonia, she’d fought the Cult so many times, killed them in caves and secret lairs, on the oceans, in open battle and by stealth. Yet there never seemed to be an end to them, and with Kleon now revealed as one of them, her brother serving his aims, the exhaustion of a fight that never really ended was weighing on her.

They reached the dock and Kassandra leapt off of the ship before it could tie off, knowing that Barnabas would handle the process. He was under orders to leave if it looked like the Athenians were going to bring their fleet into the city proper, but she didn’t think it was likely. Kleon needed a win, one he could take credit for, and he was no Admiral. No, he’d try and take Amphipolis by force, relying on the numbers of Athenians and Euboeans under his command.

It wasn’t hard to find the Spartan encampment, on the walls of the city. She scrambled over several, her well-trained fingers finding cracks and gaps for her to use, and there it was, in the place with the best view of the water and the hillsides where Kleon’s men were encamped. It was exactly where she’d expected it would be.

She was very proud of herself for simply walking in. There were sentries, and she even let them see her in advance, so that by the time she reached their line they’d reported her to someone who’d clearly been told to watch for her. A young man, no one she knew, who took off his helmet as he approached her.

“Eagle Bearer.” He inclined his head. “The General told us to expect you. He is this way.”

“Thank you.” She let herself be led, feeling eyes on her, as was often the case when she entered an encampment like this. She’d signed on to battles for both sides in the war over the years – she _was_ a misthios, after all, she fought for money – and there were always some that saw a woman and wanted to put her in her place. Athenians were the worst, but they had very strange ideas about a woman’s place in Athens. Women leaving their houses or eating a meal alongside men upset them. If nothing else, at least Sparta recognized that women had minds, could own property, run a household, even divorce.

It was amazing that Aspasia had done as well as she had in Athens, considering how backward they were on the subject.

Since this was a camp of Spartans and their allies, the stares weren’t too bad, and she saw several faces she recognized from Pylos. Those varied between respect and outright reverence, even fear on a few, and that she didn’t like. She’d no problem with being respected, but either extreme made her uneasy.

He was standing staring out at the water. Knowing that all eyes were on them, she didn’t do anything foolish. She wasn’t the type, anyway. But as he turned and she saw the bandage on his leg, she felt her face curdle, and knew he saw it. The young soldier who’d let her to him made his salute, and left once Brasidas dismissed him.

“Let no one say that you don’t have timing to shame a poet.” He smiled, stepped in closer and took her arms in his. Both of them keenly aware of their audience, lurking just out of earshot. “I feared…”

“And I as well for you.” She wanted to touch his hair. He’d let it grow, by Spartan standards at least, and it was just long enough to frame his eyes. Her eyes flicked down to take in the leg again. “How bad?”

“Stiff, but functional. I’m lucky he didn’t get me in the arm.”

She didn’t say anything to that. Instead she stepped up next to where he’d been staring out over the hills across the inlet. The sun was still high, there were no fires as such, no way to gauge numbers with the possibility of troops hiding in the trees.

“How long, do you think, before he finds his nerve?” Brasidas sounded tired to her.

“They castrated him politically in Athens. Between the Mytilene debacle and the play…”

“Play?”

“Yes, I know it sounds absurd, but one play mocking him and the Athenians couldn’t wait to turn on him. The same way they turned on Pericles. If there’s anything Athenians love to do, it’s hate someone prominent.” She shook her head. “They needed some help, but they did enough damage to drive him here.”

“I’m surprised he left Athens alive.”

“I was hampered by circumstances.” She turned to face him. “I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner.”

He waved his hand, then surprised her by reaching out and taking hers, in full view of his men. When he spoke his voice was even deeper than usual, and it sent a shiver through her.

“You’re here now. All that matters.” He met her eyes. “But I did notice you didn’t answer my question.”

“Left to his own, he’ll wait until those ships out there have been driven off and he can bring even more men ashore. The only way they know how to beat Sparta is with numbers. Engage the phalanx, then bring more men in, trying to get the sides. He’ll want as many as he can get.”

“Left to his own.” He let go of her hand after his thumb traced a little circle on her palm, a very distracting circle that had her mind half-focused on the first few days they’d gotten to know one another. Or the night before they’d rushed off to Pylos. “So you think he can be goaded.”

“Almost certainly. With a little effort, you can get him to come at you when you choose. He’s terrified of looking weak, losing what support he has left.”

“Well.” He smiled at her, the smile he’d used when they’d met again in Sparta after she’d taken his advice and killed the Monger out of the public eye. “Sounds like he’s looking for retribution.”

“Can’t have that, can we?” She smiled back. There was fear for him in her, after what she’d seen happen to him at Pylos, but also relief to be near him, to have him near to her.

“You’ll stay with me tonight? Or will you be on your ship?”

“If you’re not worried what your men will think…”

“After having thought you might be dead for the past few months? No, I’m not worried what my men will think. I’ve never been less worried about what _anyone_ thinks.” He stepped in closer. “I have missed you, and cursed everything that got between us. I would be a fool to miss the chance now.”

“Then I will come to you tonight.” She stepped away because she was afraid she might kiss him in front of the encampment, and while she didn’t care what anyone thought, she didn’t want to make them envious of their General the night before they went off to fight for him. A last nod shared between them, and she made her way back down to the dock, where the _Adrestia_ waited.

“I’m surprised to see you back so soon.” Barnabas said when she strode up the plank and onto the ship.

“I’ll be going back up tonight.”

“Will there be fighting then?”

“I doubt Kleon will want to move that quickly. But possibly tomorrow. It all depends on how anxious he is.” She shook her head, looking down into the water. “Or how overconfident.”

“Should I ask about…”

“I saw him.” Barnabas was making sure to look away, to not make her feel like he was interrogating her. Which he absolutely was. She wondered if Nikolaos would be doing this instead, if her life had taken a different path, if they’d not gone up the mountain that night. Would Alexios be leading men for Sparta? What would her role have been? He’d trained her from the time her fingers could close around a staff, he’d taught her better than the Agoge could have, he couldn’t have been teaching her all of that expecting her to marry and run a household. He’d known what she would become. What would they have been to each other?

Would he be wanting to know Brasidas’ intentions? And how would she have felt about that?

“And?” Barnabas’ voice brought her back to the now.

“He’s alive.”

“Sometimes you say less than nothing.”

“Sometimes I do.” She laughed at the sour look on his face. “I already have a _mater_, I don’t need two.”

“Sometimes I think you need _ten_.” He threw up his hands. “Aphrodite and Athena protect us. You’ll at least tell me if you ever decide to get married?”

“Eventually.” She pretended to think about it. “I think after the second year, certainly.”

He grumbled, and she clapped her hand on his shoulder with a smile, which he returned after a few more moments of grumbling.

“How is the ship? Are the _eretai _ready, in case we need to depart in a hurry?”

“The crew know their work. Have we ever failed you?”

“I’m more worried that I will fail them. This is a dangerous place to be, and it will be more so before it ends.” She released his shoulder, leaned back against the rail. “You know, you’ve long since repaid any debt you may have owed me. You could just take the ship and go.”

“Please, _misthios_.” He shook his head. “Where would I go, to do what? Hire myself out to thugs like the Kephallonian Cyclops again? No.” If his eyes were wet, she pretended not to see it. “We’ve done so much together, and you’ve paid the crew and upkeep on the ship for years. Please let’s not speak of foolish things. I am your man and this is your ship.”

“If you say.” She felt a spasm of warmth and slapped him on the back to cover for it, or express it, she wasn’t certain. “I suppose once you followed after me to Athens I shouldn’t expect you to be easily sent off now.”

“Of course not!” He grabbed her arm, clasping it with his own. “And if you need advice about…”

“No, that’s fine.” She laughed as his expression sank. “You’re such a busybody. Go harass the crew, I need to rest.”

*

She’d come close to assaulting him the second they were alone in his tent.

Neither of them were entirely sure which one brought them to the ground. She’d worn only a _chiton_ and sandals, and he’d removed his armor and his _exomis_ had come off fairly quickly. It was risky to be naked – while a night attack was unlikely, it wasn’t unheard of – but there was no way to stop it from happening, as his shaking hands had nearly torn the offending garment off once she’d slipped out of hers.

She was a bit thinner than he remembered, probably from her time in the Athenian’s prison. He ran his hands all over her body, taking her in since the only light came form a small oil lamp on the map table. She arched that perfect neck and caught his mouth with hers, kissing him almost brutally, he could feel his lips bruising as he gave into it and kissed her back just as hard.

There was no time for anything, he felt Eros fall fully on him and knew he was helpless in the grasp of it. Every time their mouths parted she would make a small noise, a gasp or a groan, and then she’d come back in and fill his entire world with her. Her taste, her smell, her bare breasts pressed against his chest. Her arms wrapped around him, the strength and grace of them.

He was hard in seconds and she reached down and grasped him, straddling him in he dark. In the past they’d tried to take time, explore each other, but not now. Now it had to happen, and it had to happen now. His hands cradled her astonishing, muscular ass as she descended on him until he was fully inside her and she moaned into his mouth when she was all the way down.

Thought vanished. They were there, together, moving against each other and he knew he was not going to be able to control himself, or do much of anything but surrender to the tide, the sensation of her in his arms, riding him. Looking down from above him, her hands now flat against his chest, her nails scraping at him. She chewed them, and he felt every jagged half-moon and loved knowing that she would leave marks.

She’d left marks in him the very first moment they’d met, in that warehouse.

Kassandra kept having to bite her cheek or her own arm to keep from screaming, her whole being contracted down to the feel of his body, his cock inside her, the taste of his mouth. She’d drawn a little blood and could taste it, could feel him close to the edge and had no interest in prolonging it. Not tonight. This wasn’t a long, slow exploration – she knew him by now. She just slid up and down, bringing them both closer, feeling every twitch and pulse of his muscles as they went faster and harder.

“I love you.” She didn’t even realize it was her voice, moaned out as she arched her back. “Please. Please. So close _please.”_

He rolled them, hitting his head on the tent’s central pole and not caring, one hand wrapped around her back and the other seeking and finding the hard clit between her folds and sliding against it, matching his own ragged breathing and every thrust of his hips.

“You’re mine.” It was more a growl than words.

“Yes, and you.” She wrapped both hands around his head and pulled him down to her. “Mine. _Now.”_

He hadn’t even realized he was waiting for permission until that one word and then there it was and he came so hard that if she hadn’t slid her mouth over his he might well have been heard across the camp. His hips kept moving, his whole being gone in a moment and he could just barely feel her contract, stiffening beneath him. Her fingers so tight around his jaw he might have worried if he could have thought anything at all.

He only came back to himself after panting for air for long enough that his arm felt sore from her weight on it, and they shifted so he could lie on his back and she could use him as a pillow. The sound of their breathing, both of them wrung out, filled the tent.

She rested her head on him, her hair loose and unbraided, and he ran his fingers through it.

_“_I’ve… Eros I’ve known.” She surprised him by speaking. “And philia, I’ve loved that way. Sometimes both. Never both at once this much.”

“You terrify me.” He was still brushing his hand through her hair. “Because I feel things with you I’ve never felt with anyone, or for anyone.”

“Good.” She bit him, not hard. “Did you still want to…”

“Yes.”

“After tomorrow, then.”

“You think?”

“He’ll come tomorrow. He’ll know I’m here. He’ll worry who I’ll bring, if he gives me time.” She exhaled against his chest. “Deimos might be here.”

“He might.”

She wanted to ask him to stay away from her brother. But she couldn’t. She loved him, and that meant she knew him. He couldn’t send men into battle and not lead them. He couldn’t let them face their deaths and not face his. She squeezed her eyes tight, her arms around him.

“You should wear your hair down more.”

“You don’t like the braid?”

“The braid is beautiful. You’d be beautiful bald.”

“I’d like to see you with longer hair.” She reached up and played with the long braided loop of his hair. He let her, looked at her face in the dark, the lamp edging her features in amber. Her eyes reminded him of a ring he’d seen on a Syracusian trader, a topaz, gold around the ring of her iris. He moved to kiss her and she bridged the gap. His lips were a little sore but he didn’t care.

When they stopped for air she brushed her fingers against his lips.

“I bled you.”

“Yes.” He grinned, feeling the split and not remotely caring. “Left your mark on my chest, too.”

Despite everything, she felt alive and amused by him, by the contentment in his voice. She should likely be terrified, but she wasn’t. Tomorrow would come in its own time.

Tonight she had him, and he had her, his arms around her.

“I love you, Kassandra of House Agiad.”

“And I you, Brasidas of Sparta.” She felt laughter in her, but refused to let it out. She didn’t want to let anything escape her. The moon wasn’t visible outside the tent flap, but there was enough light that she was sure it was full again. Selene watching them. “We should sleep.”

“Not just yet.” He bent his head and grazed where her neck met her collarbone. She felt it rush through her. “I need more of you.”

She decided to stop talking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like this is a good stopping place, since we all know what happens next. I have ideas for other stories set after this with Natakas and Kyra, but I may need to step away for a bit. I hate watching Kassandra lose people, and it's what a lot of my fics with her are about, so I'd like to try and write something more fun for her.


End file.
